Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse?

It’s nerve-wracking to live in the historical moment of an epic turning point, especially when the great groaning garbage barge of late industrial civilization doesn’t turn quickly where you know it must, and you are left feeling naked and ashamed with your dark worldview, your careful preparations for a difficult future, and your scornful or tittering relatives reminding you each day what a ninny you are to worry about the tendings of events.

Persevere. There are worse things in this life than not being right exactly on schedule.

Two simple words explain why more robust signs of an economic collapse have hung fire since the tremors of 2008: inertia and fraud.

Never in human history has there been such a matrix of complex systems so vast, dense, weighty, and powerful for running everyday life (nor a larger population engaged in it). That much stuff in motion takes a while to slow down. The embodied energy has kept enough of it running to give the appearance of continuity. For instance, agri-biz still sends its amber waves of grain and tankers of corn-syrup to the Pepsico snack-food factories, and the WalMart trucks still faithfully convey the pallets of Cheetos, Fritos, Funyons, and Tostitos from the Pepsico loading dock to the big box aisles of glory. The freeways still hum with traffic even though oil is pricey at $100 a barrel. The lights stay on. The gabble and blabber of Cable TV continues remorselessly in the background of life. All of that is due to inertia. It gives the superficial impression of the old normal carrying on. Things go on until they can’t, in the immortal words of Herb Stein

The fraud is present in the abuse and misrepresentation of official statistics used as metrics in government policy, in the pervasive accounting chicanery of that same government in its fiscal dealings, as well as in our leading financial institutions and corporations, including control fraud in banking, interest rate rigging, mortgage and title fraud, front-running, naked shorting, re-hypothecation, money laundering, pumping-and-dumping, channel stuffing, the endless innovation of swindles, and, most importantly, the fundamental mispricing of the cost of money, which reverberates through everything else, most particularly real estate, stocks, and bonds. Beyond that, in the shadows of the shadowland known as shadow banking, a liminal realm of secrets and intrigues, only a few are privileged to know what is going on, and you can be sure they only know their end of the trade — while immense sums of ever more abstract “money” slosh through the derivative sewers on their way to oblivion in the ocean of failed trust.

So, don’t feel bad if this colossal armature of folly still stands, and have faith that the blinding light of God’s judgment will eventually shine even unto the watery depths where failed trust has sunk. Sooner or later the relationship between reality and truth re-sets to the calculus of what is actually happening.

Meanwhile, the big questions worth reflecting upon are: What is the shape of the future? How might we conduct ourselves in it and on our way to it; and how will we think and feel about all that? It’s very likely that the journey to where we’re going will be rougher than the actual destination, once we get there. There is a hearty consensus outside the mainstream financial media and the thickets of academia that the models we have been using to understand the economy look more broken each month, and this surely adds to the difficulty of constructing our own mental models for how the everyday world of the years ahead will operate.

Some of the commentators in blogville and elsewhere like to blame capitalism. Capitalism is a phantom adversary. It isn’t an economic system. It isn’t an ideology, really, or a belief system. If the word means anything, it describes the behavior of accumulated surplus wealth in concert with the known laws of physics — the movement of energy through time and space — and the choices we make organizing society in relation to that. The energy is embodied as capital, represented in money for convenience. Interest expresses the cost of money over time and the risks associated with lending it. By the way, interest rates work the same way under all political systems, despite attempts in some societies to criminalize it.

During the high tide of the industrial expansion, when fossil fuels were cheap and we accumulated the greatest wealth surplus ever in history, humanity made some very bad choices, squandering this possibly one-time bonanza. We fought two world wars, and lots of wasteful lesser ones. Russia and its imitators attempted to collectivize wealth under gangster government and only succeeded in impoverishing everyone but the gangsters. America built suburbia and Las Vegas. The one thing that no “modern” culture did was plan for a future when the fossil fuel orgy and the techno-industrial fiesta might wind down, which is exactly the case now. Instead, we opted for the Julian Simon folly of crossing our fingers and hoping that some unnamed band of genius wizard innovators would mitigate the problems of resource scarcity and population overshoot just in time.

The demonizers of capitalism propose to remedy our compound predicament by just getting rid of money. But the idea of a human society without money leaves you either up a baobab tree on the paleolithic savannah, or in some sort of Ray Kurzweil techno-narcissistic masturbation fantasy multiverse with no relation to the organic doings on planet earth. I suspect as long as there are human societies there will be things to exchange that have a quality we call “money,” and as long as that’s the case, some individuals will have more of it than others, and they will lend some of their surplus to others on terms. What most people call capitalism was a model of economy derived from a particular transitory moment in history. It seemed to describe reality, but after a while it didn’t because reality changed and it was, finally, just a model. Nothing lasts forever. Boo-hoo, Karl Marx, J.M Keynes, and Paul Krugman.

What’s cracking up first is the complexity and abstraction of our current money operations, sometimes loosely called the financialized economy. If we blame anything for our problems with money, blame our half-baked attempts to mitigate the wind-down of the techno-industrial cavalcade of progress by issuing ersatz surplus wealth in the form of debt — that is, promises to fork over hypothetical not- yet-accumulated wealth at some future date. There are too many promises now, and too few trustworthy promisors, and poor prospects for generating the volumes of wealth as we did in the recent past.

The hidden (or ignored) truth of this quandary expresses itself inevitably in the degenerate culture of the day, the freak show of pornified criminal avarice that the USA has become. It only shows how demoralizing our recent history has been that the collective national attention is focused on such vulgar stupidities as twerking, or the Kanye-Kardashian porno romance, the doings of the Duck Dynasty, and the partying wolves of Wall Street. By slow increments since about the time John F. Kennedy was shot in the head, we’ve become a land where anything goes and nothing matters. The political blame for that can be distributed equally between Boomer progressives (e.g., inventors of political correctness) and the knuckle-dragging “free-market” conservatives (e.g., money is free speech). The catch is, some things do matter, for instance whether the human race can continue to be civilized in some fashion when the techno-industrial orgy draws to a close.

In Part 2: How Life Will Change, we sort out the new operating principles that will matter more in the future than the trash heap of current cultural norms. The society that emerges from the post-growth economy will surely require a new moral compass, a set of values based on qualities of behavior and things worth caring about — as opposed to coolness, snobbery, menace, or power, the current lodestars of human aspiration.

That guy 'fonestar' is quite deluded, you know. He has classic signs of a disorder in which there is only one means of trade (which happens to rely solely on an electronic means, and the free flow of the Internet (as well as electricity), and his only angle is the worship of some weird Jim Jones type of character, who he seems to think is a 'saviour'. A deluded punk who was weaned on video games, and never knew that people survived without 'modern conveniences' like cars, electricity, or the Cotton Gin, this one is beneath consideration as an advisor. Either THAT, or he simply wants to sucker more people in to his 'scheme'...

Here are a couple of links from the current situation on Earth. As we all know, Kerry wants to impose 'sanctions' on Russia, and Russia has responded that it will dump all it's U.S. investment holdings if this were to take place. GAZPROM (Putin's master) has suspended gas discounts to Ukraine, and demanded full payment (which they do not have). It has ALSO warned of possible 'supply interruptions' of natural gas deliveries to Europe. CHINA has decided to ally with RUSSIA, by the way, and if the economic war heats up, the U.S. DOLLAR is FINISHED (the other nations holding it will try to be the first ones out as the mad scramble to dump the USD accelerates in nano-seconds of robo-trading time). Oh, FUCK, it's gonna get REALLY BAD from this point (should the Oligarchical Masters pull out the stops, and let this Titanic slide down the ways).

I feel the block chain is the weak link, say for example that Bitcoin takes off and 50,000,000 people use it for daily transactions, buy food, gas, clothes, pay bills... etc. If the block chain is currently at 15 GB for relatively few transactions, what does it look like after millions per hour?

So, holding Bitcoin I can be ripped-off at any time with absolutely no recourse? What sort of Ledger system is that? Excuse me but perhaps that explains why a lot of folks are sceptical of holding Bitcoin and trust it even less than Fiat currency? I'm not sure that I would trust a Central Banker much more than a Hacker, but it's a close call.

I would seriously suggest that this aspect is something that needs to be addressed before Bitcoin can go mainstream.

One fundamental flaw that involves the size: The blockchain must be transmitted and stored. It would grow exponetially if adopted. Every bit transmitted or stored represents a unit of energy, every second of every day. This makes bitcoin inherintly inefficient. There is a cost to the very existence of it. It is sort of like interest on a loan that way except you will pay even though you own it. Every transaction will account for this cost. That cost will rise and fall according to energy prices, even if hard to perceive. The more energy costs the less mileage you get out of bitcoin. Suppose it adds the equivalent of a penny to every dollar (1%) to both sides of every transaction. Yeah that's a high percentage (one should hope) but you get the picture.

Now take something like a dollar or a euro. Even if nobody will sell you anything you can make use of them. You can use as TP. You can burn for heat. You can stuff them in the walls as insulation. Perhaps confetti at parades. These are physical items and have uses beyond a medium of exchange and they have no absolute ongoing cost to have or use.

Gold and silver may be more valuable in the end but they are not as useful as paper (try wiping with a silver bar before you down vote). Hedge accordingly.

When cold, harsh Siberian winter comes, and water freezes when wife throws out remains of dinner in to yard, is good to find young honey who has 'hot storage' for sausages. Matters not when wife bitches (she is old, and fat, and mamushka). Boris learn to like new storage facilitator (that is, until thaw, and wife and young honey take trip to Mediterranian together to find larger sausages, using money from Boris).

fonestar used to be like yourselves. Drinking beer, hunting, fishing, riding dirt bikes and listening to Led Zeppelin. Then he started hanging out with those cryptoanarchist kids. The rest as they say, is history...

It shrunk because of the first debt ceiling fight that resulted in the sequester and tax increases. Now the sequester was promptly abandoned by both dumbcrats and repukes once their true overlords (banker/lobbyists) demanded it. It's no coincidence that the taper coincided with the reduced deficits, even though Bernacke insisted he wasn't monetizing the debt. But that is all about to change now that the debt ceiling is abandoned. The first indicater was the farm bill, a bloated porkulus pig. Now we have 0zer0's budget, another bloated porkulus pig. Throw in 0zer0care "fixes", including insurer bailouts, plus all the ever expanding goodies to the FSA, a new Cold War, and the deficit will go parabolic again soon. Debt is all TPTB live for.

That's a good summation. Any reduction in the deficit can be assumed to be temporary, in the current situation; but your listing of details shows you're a serious student. I find it useful to think critically about virtually every sentence I read; for instance, "oil is pricey at $100/barrel"; is it ? That's only $10 in 1974 dollars. If oil is so pricey why can I still buy a gallon of gas with a silver quarter ? And so on.

Oil is pricey at 100 a barrel because real income hasn't kept up with inflation. Say the average worker made 1.25 in 64 when our coins were still real money. That's about 20$ and hour in today's dollars. And say that quarter bought a gallon of gas, 5 gallons of gas an hour on average. That same person at minimum wage is now only making about 2 1960s quarters, 2 gallons of gas. Not saying the answer is to now pay people 20 an hour, in saying we have destroyed our money and our economy by creating a system that expands debt and inflates the money supply far faster than wages can realistically keep up with.

Quotation: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

I DIDN'T CREATE this system, so be careful of the useage of the word 'WE', "in saying we have destroyed our money...".

DEFLATE the VALUE, and INFLATE the number of currency units, was the gist of Jefferson's thought (the quote that I posted above).

SO, you want to increase the so-called 'minimum wage' as though it is somehow a 'RIGHT' to be EMPLOYED? If you can't do things, those who wish to hire one who CAN do things is NOT OBLIGATED to give you SHIT. Is THIS your pathetic attempt to state that it is somehow a 'BASIC HUMAN RIGHT' to be EMPLOYED, or something?

If you want 20 dollars an hour, learn a FUCKING SKILL, son. If you cannot do this, I suggest you start a company that affords you the luxury of having OTHERS do the work for you (in the past, this was called 'avarice', and 'laziness').

A 'greenskeeper' truly knows how to push a lawnmower, Carl. He can't build it, repair it, buy it, gather customers who want his service, pay for the fuel to operate it, put out the capital outlay to purchase the trailers and trucks to haul the equipment, or anything else pertaining to the operation; BUT he can PUSH A MECHANICAL DEVICE that happens to cut grass (if he gets someone else who knows to sharpen blades). A worthy job, but NOT ONE that calls for a wage over minimum survival (and SURELY not worth 20 feds an hour, or 15, in the case of McDonalds).

AND, this comment of yours has exactly WHAT to do with the article at hand that you are commenting on, Carl?

If the US operated in a vacuum, I would agree, but there are many countries which will collapse before the US does. This entire game is one of last man standing, and they all know it. look for the first powerful nation to fall bringing down the rest with it. Sore losers will abound.

Pinky,some day you will be laughing in everybody elses face when you have a way to survive and their stocks are being used as toliet paper...Remember investing is for the future not the everyday window dressing of pseudo net worth that all these investors don't "really" have.

I'll bet most "everyone else" has forgotten the lesson of Bill Miller. Miller beat the S&P 500 every year for 15 straight years--an unprecedented run--and was so far out in front of his peers you could barely see him, like Secretariat.

It wouldn't surprise me to see some major news printing about stock market reverses before this Christmas; it's a momentum market now and losing speed. It's Wiley Coyote moment can't be years in the future anymore.

Corny#2: A wealthy nouveau riche business guy is doing thr tourist thing in Rural Africa. His travels take him to a village where most eveyone is peacefully resting in the shade with cildren, parents and grandparents conversing amongst themselves . The businessman wanting to impress the "poor primitives" shows them his two Rolex watches which he says cost $10,000 each. An elderly villager replies. Yes Bwana you have the watches, but we have the time..

That and the constant threat of wars and more wars. The ever expanding chasm between what is and what the tv and the media want you to beleive.

The constant talk of imminent recovery, while unemployment climbs, foodstamps climb and foreclosures go on forever like stairsteps to infinity.

The fact that conventional oil production peaked in 2006 and we have been dancing on an ever shorter plateau extending it with tar sands and fracking and deep sea drilling so costly and ineffective that the major oil companies are getting out and selling their capital equipment. Shell left the Artic sea and Alaska and walked away from gassification plant in Louisanna.

The entire growth of the 20th century, the homes, the highways, the factorys, the men on the moon and in submarines at the bottom of the sea, was all brought to us by cheap oil and cheap oil is gone and without it so is economic growth. The economic bust and the peak of conventional oil production occurred virtually simultaneously, and all since then has been manipulation and show to convince the dreamers they are still asleep and all is well.

The collapse won't be admitted, or reported or televised, it will always be the opposite, we might wll be sitting in hovels, cooking rats over fires made with sticks and still the newspaper we crumple to light our fires will talk of recovery and green shoots and a bright new world with new wall street trading highs.

we are nestled in a cocoon of propaganda, that cannot protect us from the onrushing train, but merely distract us so we don't notice our imminent death. Apparently the powers that be find it more desirable that we die in our sleep than in a panic.

All wines contain sulfites. I believe the odds are about a thousand to one that his wife's friend is a classic neurotic. The organic wine site itself says; with regard to non-sulfite added wines, that siulfites in your wine are not causing your headache. quote-unquote. I suppose you have evidence for your statement?

An American investment banker was taking a much-needed vacation in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.

The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The investment banker scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA, and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats until eventually you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to the middleman you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You could control the product, processing and distribution.”

Then he added, “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City where you would run your growing enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions.”
“Millions, senor? Then what?”

To which the investment banker replied, “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

I have to admit I used the first version that I found. Didn't realize there are many versions but same essence I guess. It makes you think though, that story, about working and commuting for 30+ years so as to retire in a nice sunny place, when you can actually do it a lot earlier in some countries and just live the bliss

The key thing to me is to maintain relatively low expectations and keep as many options available as possible. Options represent freedom to me. If all I knew how to do was fish, I would feel a little fragile. A good friend bought a home in a tiny town of 250 people, paid like ten grand for this house, and was so proud of his deal. He worked for the United Mine Workers Peabody Coal and made good money, till they shut down and left town. He found himself owning a home in an area with zero jobs, a wife and four kids. He has worked at a cardboard box factory ever since (30 years) with no viable way out. I hate the big city but I would hate more having no options. The fisherman's life sounds pretty good until his boat sinks or the fishing grounds dry up. Options are gold.

I will respond because I want to make clear on how its done, and why it can't be done in the USA.

1.) FAMILY; First and foremost is family, your example the guy with 4 kids, but in the 3rd world, there would be granny with 10meters to take care of those kids. FAMILY is gone and missing in the USA, they convinced people long ago to leave the family chase the dollar, and let the gubmint take care of you. Nobody on earth lives this way, ... the best POLICE in the world is living near family, only family watches your back, and property.

2.) Self-Sufficiency, no need for money, or insurance,... everything grows for free, all that can be eaten, or drank comes for free. Not possible in the USA.

3.) FOOD-Cheap, almost free 24/7/365,

3a.) MEAT - Every family has Pig(s), they eat the trash, scrap's and garbage that american's throw away, nothing in a 3rd world country goes to waste. In China chickens eat fly's, in India humans spit in the dirt and chickens eat spit balls'.

4.) Labor, everyone in the family contributes, nobody pay's for anything

5.) Most 3rd world the medical is almost free, and IMHO better quality given the DOC actually cares, cuz he knows your family.

In summary the USA is fucked, UNLESS you want to live in a HUMAN-ZOO like a caged animal, and policed by Israelified Nazi Cop's.

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I will close with my favorite chinese saying'...

Want to be happy for a day? take a nap
Want to be happy for a week? kill your pig
Want to be happy a year? Get married
Want to be happy for life? Love your work.

Here in the US you're paying for the priviledge of just owning propety or a house - even if it's free and clear of debt. Don't pay your property taxes and the gov can take your land or house.

Even if you try and live a cash-free existence, odds are the gov will be looking for some kind of INCOME tax.

Try and make some money selling something, and gov is going to start looking for sales tax. They spend a fortune going after people picking up a few extra $$ selling extra produce from their garden or used stuff they no longer use. Sell too much of the crap you already owned (and paid for long ago) on Ebay and you're going to have to start dealing with sales tax. Of course it's different if you're a billionaire booking 'profits' to an offshore subsidiary.

Most of the world does live this way,... most of places people have 'fish ponds',... work a few hours a day tops, and eat, fuck, and sleep, and get drunk at night dance,... same everyday,... its called life.

Take a wild ape, keep him in a zoo, and you will see one depressed fucking ape.

Keep man 'civilized' in this TV consumer modern world, and you will have to put the children on drugs, imprison the men, and make the women into whores.

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, senor.”

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Yep, I heard a GREEK/ALBANIA version, years ago.

The thing is this is how people do live, this is certainly how I live,... fish, fuck, and play the guitar, ...

I love this quote ...

"Both sides of the economic continuum have a leisure class"

The rich toil to be rich, to have what the poor already have, funny cuz the poor have the best food for health, and the rich always get sick from eating foei-gra and liver.

The extreme rich, and extreme poor, have much in common and share the same lifestyles, ... the middle are the fucked ones, ... chasing their tail, and wasting their lives.

I mostly lurk and gain great insight from the commentors here at ZH; I rarely if ever post comments. However, I have to thank for that "slightly corny" tale. I will be telling that to my daughter soon to hopefully help hammer home what it is to have a life well lived.

"You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats until eventually you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats."

The result would be what has actually happened, more than half of the oceanic ecology has been destroyed, and fish stocks have been collapsing all over the world, as we are collectively engaged in a race to the bottom towards transforming food from the oceans from being the most abundant and cheapest, to become scarce and expensive.

Another cute saying:

"Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. ...

Give him a fishing rod and he can eat tomorrow."

However, what actually happens is that money made out of nothing as debts subsidizes way too many fishing rods, after which the endebted fishermen have to work like crazy to pay off their debts, during which process they destroy the supply of fish, so that the whole thing collapses into chaos, as a classic boom bust bomb!

What that documentary illustrates is the general pattern of evil deliberate ignorance, which maximizes the short-term privatized profits, while socializing the losses, which eventually are far greater than any of the profits.

In the story above, repeated by Cacete de Ouro, enough people would accept the investment banker's advice and assistance, which would result in wiping out the fish population. Indeed, that is what is actually happening, and what is therefore expected to become far worse in the foreseeable future.

Well my friends and family certainly see me as a kid who has completely lost his mind... I feel sane on Zero Hedge though.

For me the great collapse that has been anticipated is an absolute certainity and I can't see how any rational person can deny that, it's just a matter of when. My question is how chaotic will it be? and after the incomprehendable chaos can we expect more sound localized economies?

I feel you on the family and friends. A few of them agree that this is entirely unsustainable, an they kind of acknowledge it, but on the other hand seem to think we will keep muddling along indefinitely. I always tell them that we have passed the 'event horizon' with debt. We doubled it in less than a decade, and are on track to do so again. I understand in the Keynesian world 20T in debt it no big deal as long as our GDP if rows at roughly the same pace(don't agree, but that's pretty much their theory), but there is no way in hell we will reach a 20 trillion REAL GDP before our debt is well over 25t, and history tells us there is no coming back from that. So, it's better to be a year early than a year late. That extra 15% in paper gains you miss out on by being early is a lot better than losing your ass on the down side.

And every article doesn't begin with "37 signs that xxxx is happening"
I confess I used to like the Snyder articles, but now all they are is a list of previous articles. Don't think he has written anything new in a solid 6 months

I'd rather go down in a blaze of glory than cower in the corner waging my finger at all the party goers. So the thing eventually collapses. At least I will have fun getting there. Pass the cocaine and scotch.

This is not at all his style. HyBrasilian is a much more likely candidate . Though ofc I am not sure I have observed him post in the typical francis_sawyer way I think it was last weekend if you consider formatting and trains of thought.

The world is fucking nuts. It always has been and always will be. No species is safe. You could be born a cute baby racoon and be devoured by a coyote a week later. Humans are the worst of all. This entire planet has been dog eat dog since inception.

Life is short, ... best to live it like the 'mexican on the beach' quote below,... life is short, .. no reason to live it in the USA (HELL).

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I would agree that JFK isn't when the USA went down, just taking KUNSTLERS quote as he said it was when, ...

There is one apparent thing 'anglo-saxon' man does seem to be worst at HEGEMONY and world-rape. You certainly don't see other tribes trying to control the earth, in the same manner as the USA.

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So we concur, I'll pop my beer, and Watch TV, and fuck the world I got mine, ... well until they come knocking at your door.

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I have a BULGARIAN friend, and he had a story, when Russian collapsed the cop's came door to door to 'inventory' so they could know who to protect,... stupid people told what they had, the next week the cop's went door to door and collected guns.

The following week the cops went door to door and collected what people had, ... see when Russia collapsed the cops' quit getting paid, and took it to themselves to get paid.

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This is why I choose NOT to live in the USA, cuz the day of the cop's coming to your door is very soon.

Enter Rothschilds stage left. The more I read about these bastards, the more I realize that these trillionaires are responsible for a lot of the misery on this earth. Cut off the senior heads of THAT organization (medusa style) and they would take a while to regroup and grow back, and give the world the chance it needs.

It is extremely troubling and completely unacceptable that ANY foreign power would steer, dominate or control US domestic and foreign policy. Especially such a small one, that is itself so sensitive to oppression.

Jesus, you come here for great financial insights but find nothing but tired, retreaded racist, anti-semtic, zionist propagandizing, "libertarian", homophobic prepper conspiracy theorist commenters blabbing about a zionist cabal. My god are you all for real or just scared little children hiding behind their keyboards deep in their parents basements? it's laughable yet ZH has gotten a bad rap because of them despite the great analysis and content... But these wacked-out fundies just troll the intertubes spewing their ridiculousness.

I not only upvoted you; what you say is unquestionably true, but I'll give you a great financial insight. Buy low and Sell High. This is intended as a teaching mantra. there's more there than meets the eye. the concept of patience, of waiting on the sidelines until the current madness of the crowd is clear, and then waiting a little longer for more evidence that the price movement is finished, and take the opposite position. your only source of information is the price charts, and very general knowledge about a particular market, nothing exotic. No attention at all must be paid to any commentator or guru; or any news event. The simple commandment also makes it impossible to be a trend follower. your job is to pick tops and bottoms, not look for trends. always have a stop loss; never marry your position. always remember you're going to buy and sell; going short is merely selling high first, and buying low, later. Open a futures trading account and start studying the markets; there are a lot of them and they have significant differences; but all of them make more sense than the stock market. Sometimes it's possible to see the error of the mass mind staring you right in the face; such as a growing difference between Dec. Corn and Sept. Corn prices that becomes un-realistic, and then tacks on another even wider gap too fast; you can sell the high month and buy the low month; reality says they will have to converge as the future gradually becomes the present. this can be very profitable. always be a counterpuncher; wait for the mass mind, and such speculators as may be operating in a particular market to finish making an un-realistic price; than go against it. Most people think only the stock market exists; but the futures market contains many real markets that settle in a real commodity, and have to have some kind of reality check as the delivery month rolls around. it's all a lot easier to deal with than the stock market which seems to be about Mexican Jumping Beans.

I find it very strange that this site has "contributors" who are advertising their blogsites. Which, it goes without saying, are just more ignorant ranting and babbling in an effort to collect page clicks for the advertisers and money for the perpetrator.

Here is the best reason to remain calm before during and after the collapse :o)

Part 1:

Revelation 1:1-3 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass: and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John; (2) who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw. (3) Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.

Part 2:

Revelation 21:1-5 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. (2) And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. (3) And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God: (4) and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away. (5) And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.

Conclusion:

1 Corinthians 2:9 but as it is written, Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him.

Christianity was the OG New World Order, motherfucker, and God was the original eye in the sky before the sociopaths had the technology to take his place. Constantine and his band of pirates invented Christianity Inc. and killed everybody who didn't go along with the party line. Jesus was one of many prophets in his time and place, and his teachings were a part of a pagan tradition with branches in Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Turkey before Constantine came along and turned him into an unreachable messiah in Christianity Incorporated, a fully owned subsidiary of the First Reich and the NWO.

There's a reason the Gospel of Thomas can't be found in Christianity Inc's "Holy" Bible. There's a reason On the Origin of the World isn't in there. The authorities didn't want you to read The Hypostasis of the Archons cuz it's all about them and their plan to take over humanity's spiritual progress like the fucking Borg, so they axed the document and they axed everybody who repped it.

Nothing sadder than a cult whose predictions failed. Meanwhile, Mexico just de-nationalized it's oil resources. Now that is paradigm shift. North Dakota south of the border? Immigration towards Mexico into rather than from Mexico?

Kunstler thinks the world capitalist system is a figment of our imagination, a mere phantom. That phantom seems superbly armed and highly "lawyered up" with its courts and politicians and banks and all manner of professional liars. I would be skeptical of any utopia emanating from this guy.